A University of Sydney study has found a link between sleeping more than nine hours a day and an increased mortality rate, Brisbane Times reports.
The study looked at over 200,000 people aged 45 and older in NSW over a six-year period beginning in 2006, and found regular oversleeping meant a 44 per cent increased risk of death. By contrast, sleeping fewer than seven hours a day saw a nine per cent increased mortality rate.
Co-author of the study Associate Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis said lengthy sleeping times could be indicative of an underlying, undiagnosed disease – however, he also said poor-quality sleep could be the real connection to increased mortality rates.
“In the survey, people were asked ‘How long did you sleep?’” Dr Stamatakis explained. “This most likely elicits an answer to the question: ‘How long were you in bed?”
“This says nothing about the quality of the sleep. So, reported long sleep duration could in fact be indicative of fragmented restless and poor-quality sleep.”
Quality over quantity, people!
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